The Company We Keep
by Listless.and.Lovely
Summary: Pain makes strange bedfellows. What could be in the four years between S2 and S3, between Reid and Jackson.


Just as water find its own level, Reid and Jackson found themselves drawn tighter to each other. Reid grew more vicious, colder, harsh and demanding of his surgeon, as Jackson fell deeper into his bottles, seemingly powerless to halt the deep slide into his melancholy, his broken heart eclipsing all.

The more bitter and broken the men grew, the more it felt as though they were beasts unwisely caged together. Penned in by their misery and blaming the world for it, the bars of their cage grew tighter still until Jackson felt as though he were cuffed to Reid, sewn together, bound inextricably.

He didn't initiate the first time. Just never stopped. He hadn't reckoned Reid for a fairy, but one night, in Reid's sitting room, they couldn't speak, fearing they would both speak of the suspect they sought; whoever he was, he had raped, beaten, brutalized her really, a little flower girl. He'd robbed her corpse of her small earnings and later they would find her younger brother, only 7, had witnessed all.

The silence heavy in the room had a ring of hopelessness to it. Always weighing the shoulders of both Jackson and Reid was the crushing, swallowing, loneliness. Their women had abandoned them, though well deserving of it both men were.

They listened to the crackle of the fireplace, the little creaks and shifts of a house too empty at night. Reid cleared his throat and said he might be to bed. Jackson agreed and stood from his place on the low couch.

His eyes locked to Reid's as he made his way past him. In the shared stare, they froze, seeing a mirror of their desperation, their hunger, their loneliness, in the others eyes. It was the feeling of undertow, of a missed step, of the ground giving way. It was primal, painful desperation. Each man felt the inevitability of what was about to transpire. Reid crossed the space between them and held his palm to Jackson's nape. His eyes were unreadable under the film of emptiness.

It was not of love or passion, of that Jackson was certain. There was palpable fragility in Reid when he pressed Jackson close to him, found first lips and then tongues together, palms across each other's clothes, undressing just enough to access cocks. Reid's hand was surprisingly gentle, forceful but gentle, warm and inviting. Coaxing and efficient. Jackson spared a thought for his own hands, rough from the chemistry and washing, calluses from tools of his trade, and wrapped his long fingers firm to the base of Reid. Sliding and squeezing just so, skillful here, such skillful hands.

Reid spilled with a grunt into his palm. Jackson finished with eyes turned to Reid's collar. Did he feel the tears that sprang to, Jackson helpless to stop them? He made no indication either way. Perhaps Reid wanted to spare any embarrassment. Jackson didn't care. He had no shame for his tears.

After, Jackson washed his hands, spent too long studying himself in a small mirror kept at hand for shaving and other miscellany. He wanted to see it in his own eyes, some kind of change. Some after effect or mark, something he could carry with him. Some knowledge that what just happened, had happened. Jackson wanted Reid's transgression to show on the surface the shifted he'd felt internally.

Reid never spoke of it. There were other times, after that, up until Jackson slide into the bottle one night and never came out. It kept happening. He was continuously drunk. Annoyingly his investigative abilities were nearly unaffected. Reid continued to find him out and grapple Jackson to him.

The void of his Caitlyn, his Long Susan, his wife, his heart, was not filled with booze, not filled with tail. With Reid, impossible to ever admit it to him, there were a few seconds, minutes when he was lucky, that the pain faded. Though Jackson was resistant to shame, his gut gave him good advice, and the stone he felt in his belly told him that addictive as it was, he would be forced to choose between being Reid's surgeon and he'd always choose to save himself. Even from self destruction, and that was the danger of Reid. He was Jackson's doom, his death, no matter what sweet reprieve they ripped from each other by candlelight, by firefight, by fumes of formaldehyde.

In empties drunken moments, Jackson wondered whether Drake - Bennnnittttooooo, he heard himself crow - had ever held Reid's stiffy in hand, whether they'd whispered into each other, whether they'd kept each other's secret. Secrets. They were all rotting apart inside out with secrets. Fucking Whitechapel.

There was no certainty, no pattern, with Reid at turns clutching Jackson to him, breathing in his foul bottle breath and coaxing his cock firm, at turns lashing him with cruelties, humiliating him, mocking his loss. All the while, he watched Caitlyn, Long Susan, Wife, carve out her life without. She made her mark upon the world and without him she rose as though unanchored. Though it only seemed that way with the surface. He knew that now. He sank and drifted as though unmoored. Compass with no needle.

Reid crossed the line, invariably as it goes and Jackson's grief for his wife struck him at the same time like thunderbolt. That was the end for him. He saw himself at the bottom of a deep well, Reid would keep him there without a shred of guilt. Jackson had reached a stage of drunkenness that he could no longer work with, and Reid was fed up, out of patience, full of malice.

This man would suck him dry to his marrow if he could, and think it his due. Use his tibia to pick his teeth. Staying meant accepting that, whatever it entailed, he was Reid's to command. And command he would, came so easily to Reid.

With all his faculties, pride would've kept Jackson from walking. Addled as he was by drink, he saved himself from Reid. Moderation and his own practice, those were lucky byproducts. Perhaps he had learned from this new Long Susan: no one saves you the way you save yourself.

And four years passed, among twisted rail and battered flesh, his eyes found Reid and for a blink all that transpired in those shameful moments stop between them.


End file.
